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Tracker - August 8, 2022: Latest Reliance drill results reveal much wider South Eagle Feeder Zone
 Endurance Gold Corp announced results on August 8, 2022 for additional holes at its 100% owned Reliance gold project which confirm my drilling strategy based analysis presented in Tracker July 28, 2022 that the new parallel zone hit by core holes #23 and #24 was indeed encountered by hole #27 about 100 m along strike to the southeast. Management's understanding of the system continues to evolve, as is evident in the renaming of the 020 Zone as the Eagle South Feeder Zone which is much wider at 75 m. In the drill plan below the light red shading represents the Eagle Zone that dips about 35° SW and which was the focus of drilling in 2021 until core hole #20 revealed a subvertical zone interpreted as a feeder within the 300 m wide Royal Shear-Treasure structural corridor that stretches about 2 km from Carpenter Lake in a SE direction. The concern with the shallow dipping Eagle Zone was that it daylighted in the NE direction and would terminate at the SW Royal Shear fault boundary, limiting tonnage growth potential to along strike development or repetition at depth.
The 020 Zone was understood as a vertical feeder about 25 m wide which tracked at least a 250 m strike segment of the Eagle Zone. In the latest drill plan it has been replaced by the yellow colored 75 m wide Eagle South Feeder Zone within which occur "four brecciated quartz vein structures with horizontal widths 5 to 52 m". This, however, is not as juicy as it sounds, because the quartz veins themselves are barren, possibly pre-dating the fluid flow containing gold and pathfinder elements such as arsenic and antimony. The company has observed that the gold with associated arsenopyrite mineralization occurs on the margins of these quartz veins, and has admitted that it does not yet understand the deposition dynamic though terms like "rheological contrast" have been mentioned. What is clear is that a lot more drill holes across this structure will be needed in order to understand how this contact margin mineralization behaves. For example, hole #28 intersected 31.5 m of 2.59 g/t gold, whose location coincides with the upper interval of hole #27, 10.1 m of 3.5 g/t gold. Is this an offset continuation of the original 020 zone or yet another parallel zone? The important development that the market seems to be missing is that the gold endowment scale potential of Reliance has expanded.
The most important hole still pending is #30 which is similar to #27 in length and angle but located between #23 and #27. Hole #37 which steps about 50 m to the SE of #27 is also important. The cluster of holes drilled in a NE direction (#29, 32, 35, 36) were drilled to collect geology information about the corridor and see if there are similar quartz veins present with contact mineralization in the northeastern portion of the Royal-Treasure Shear corridor. When I asked CEO Robert Boyd about these holes he merely stated their purpose, not what was observed in the core, so this might yet deliver a pleasant surprise. The drill has now been moved to an area NW of #23 (within the label "dominantly argillite sediments" in the drill plan above) to assess the Eagle South Feeder Zone in this direction, which could yield some low hanging fruit. Endurance has drilled 3,141 m of a planned 8,000 m program. Meanwhile the company is pushing the road up the hill to allow additional drilling along strike of the Eagle South Feeder Zone in a SE direction.
Endurance now describes the Royal Shear Fault as SW dipping, though it does not yet know the angle because the longest holes in a SW direction (#27 and 30) have not pierced these hanging wall argillite sediments that were thrust into place after the mineralizing event. But the angle may be much shallower than initially assumed in prior sections published by the company. Endurance is working on new sections as more information arrives, which will be included with the next drill result news release. What intrigued me was the bottom of hole #27 which yielded 4.8 m of 1.11 g/t gold starting at 267.1 m. This opens the possibility that the width of the South Eagle Feeder Zone may be double what is currently known. Endurance may build a road that will allow it to spot holes in the hanging wall sediments (the gray) and drill in a NE direction to determine the potential for additional brecciated quartz veins with high grade mineralization beneath the barren argillite hanging wall cover rock. Previously I provided a conceptual model to illustrate what Endurance management was thinking based on a 2021 section which depicts a fairly steep Royal Shear Fault. I have modified this conceptual model to show how the 2022 core drilling is changing the perception of Reliance's potential and explain why Reliance is a major emerging gold discovery.
*JK owns shares in Endurance Gold Corporation
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